Welcome to Meshcherskii on the Internet

Please read the important instructions on this page before attempting to view Meshcherskii's problems for the first time.

Introduction

A Collection of Problems in Mechanics by I. V. Meshcherskii has been standard textbook in mechanics in Russia for nearly a century. It was, for time, banned as Czarist by Stalin. However, after the quality of engineering graduates plummeted, it was permitted to return. Nine printed editions appeared in Meshcherskii's lifetime. After his death, work continued in the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute where he had worked. In 1965, the twenty-sixth edition was translated into English. Even before then, however, the book had influenced American students as problems emigrated from the book to most American textbooks.

The problems presented here part of an ongoing project at the department of Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The goal is to bring Meshcherskii's problems to the Internet, complete with diagrams, animations, hints, and solutions. They are intended as a supplement to a sophomore level course in Dynamics here, but it is hoped that they have much broader utility.

How the problems are presented.

When you go to a page containing a problem, there will be three frames. The frame on the top right contains the problem to be solved. The left frame contains a list of hints. Not all the hints are shown at first. Once a hint is shown, clicking on it will bring up the hint in the frame in the bottom left. Clicking on the solution will also bring it up in the bottom left frame. Warning! On some systems, resizing the browser window or one of the frames will cause the timer for the hints to reset. It is therefore recommended that you resize the window, if necessary, very soon after loading the page.

All animations are provided in the Animated GIF format. The animations should loop continuously. If they stop for some reason, clicking on the hint button (in the left frame) which originally brought up the hint will reload and restart the animation. Animations are also available in the QuickTime format. QuickTime is a higher quality format which provides for smoother animation and includes controls for fast forward, rewind, and stepping frame by frame. Unfortunately, it is not supported by all systems, and it is also much larger the GIF, usually by at least ten times. Thus, if you have a slow connection, it is not recommended that you download the QuickTime animations.

What you will need to view Meshcherskii's problems.

These physics problems make use of Animated GIFs, frames and Java. In principle, this means that Netscape 2.0 or higher (3.0 or higher on a MacOS), Internet Explorer 3.0 or higher, or a non-beta release of HotJava will do. However, theory and practice are not always the same. In particular, the following systems have been known to have difficulty with Meshcherskii's problems: Click here to view a list of systems used in testing.

Troubleshooting

If you go to Meshcherskii's problems and, after waiting 10 or 15 seconds in order to let the applet load, only see three blank frames, make sure that Java is enabled in your browsers. Click here for instructions on how to do this. This solves 90% of all problems.

If Java is enabled, you do not see anything, and you are using an X-Window version of Netscape, double check that all the fonts in your font path exist. You may need to system administrator's assistance to do this.

If the applet begins to execute but then stops (look at the status bar. It should say something like "Loading Applet TAMApplet" or "Starting Java applet"), or you get an error message "NullPointerException" (again, look at the status bar), then you are probably running low on memory. Quit your browser and free more memory, then relaunch your browser. On MacOS systems, restarting the system is often helpful.

If you get an error message containing "security.socket.connect" then your copy of Internet Explorer has the wrong Java settings. Follow these instructions to correct the settings.

If you are using HotJava and get an "Applet not started" message, then you probably need to change the security settings for unsigned applets. Select Edit | Preferences | Applet Security and choose High Security for Unsigned applets.

If none of these help, and you are using one of the tested systems contact your system administrator for help. You might also try visiting the the Netscape help page or to the Microsoft support page. Even if you are using a system not in our testing program, there is still good chance it can be made to work with help from your system administrator or one of the above links.

The Problems

  1. A cylinder rolls down a wedge which is free to slide
  2. A triangluar lamina falls over under the action of gravity.

Last modified by Itai Seggev on Friday, August 1, 1997.